“I dunno,” spoke somebody. “Old Fuss and Feathers has a soft heart in him for the enlisted man. Now if they were officers he’d give ’em short shift.”
“Did you find many wounded, poor fellows?” the detail man was asked.
“Not near enough before darkness. There’s like to be a hundred of the First lying now in the cornfields—and the rain closing down.”
“That’s bad, bad. What with the mud and the corn and the ditches, it must be a sore place to search.”
“We’re doing our best.”
“Well, lads,” Sergeant Mulligan uttered, “I’m wet through already, an’ I’m goin’ to turn in, for to-morrow we’ll likely take the city. An’ why we didn’t go for’d an’ take it this evenin’, on the heels o’ that mob, I dunno. Wid the help o’ Shields an’ Pillow, the First could ha’ walked right along.”
“An’ walked into a trap, maybe. But the gin’ral had no orders, an’ he waited too long, undecided.”
“Yes; and the gen’ral-in-chief stopped him, too. Like as not that United States commissioner, by name o’ Trist, who’s been followin’ with headquarters all the way from Puebla, is instructed ag’in any more fightin’ than is necessary. ‘Conquer a peace’; that’s the word. And if we’ve conquered it this day, we’ll give Santy Annie a chance to say so, after he’s calmed down a bit.”
“Right, then,” Sergeant Mulligan agreed. “Let ’em think it over. For if we entered in too much of a hurry ’twud be only a half-baked p’ace after all.”
The group broke up.